Fitting a voice that’s grand enough to fill the world’s most
prestigious concert halls into the confines of a quaint little meetinghouse
isn’t as easy as you might assume. But there’s one obligation renowned opera
singer Barbara Quintiliani will be happy to escape when she comes to the
Monadnock Music Festival next week.

“I’m excited that I don’t have to die at the end of the
evening,” said Quintiliani, a Massachusetts native who has won some of the most
coveted awards in opera and played unforgettable roles on stages all over the
world.

Being a world-class opera star means mastering the death
scene, of course. But for Quintiliani, who rose to fame overnight from
blue-collar roots and who knows more than she’d like about hardship in real life,
it’s nice to get a break from the drama. Her solo concert on July 20 at the
Peterborough Town House will offer music in keeping with the carefree mood of
midsummer.

“It’s fun music. It’s lively. There’s no esoteric poetry. I
just want people to enjoy it and have a good time,” said Quintiliani, whose
past roles include the title role in Wexford Festival Opera’s production of
Donizetti’s Maria Padilla and Elettra in Mozart’s Idomeneo at the
Washington National Opera.

She’ll kick off the Peterborough concert with a selection of
arias from Handel operas before presenting a series of songs by French
composers followed by some Spanish folk songs. Later in the show she’ll sing
several pieces by American composer Elinor Remick Warren.

But if the pieces are lighter than her usual fare, that
doesn’t mean this celebrated soprano will be holding anything back. “I think
it’s one of the hardest things to do as a singer, and one of the most
rewarding, to stand there – just you and a piano – and sing,” Quintiliani said.
“I really love the opportunity to give a recital with piano. It’s really nice
to scale back and see people’s faces and be able to communicate on that level.”

There’s a frankness about this style of performing that befits
Quintiliani as well. Growing up in a blue collar family, her childhood clouded
by her mother’s mental illness, Quintiliani had never so much as heard an opera
singer when she joined the school chorus to fulfill her high school graduation
requirements. Noting her indifference, her chorus director gave her a copy of
Faure’s Requiem Pie Jesu and told her to prepare her own rendition for
the following week.

Half goofing around, Quintiliani practiced mimicking the
strange sounds and came back the next week with a spot-on imitation. “After the
first line, his jaw just dropped,” she recalled.

Quintiliani’s career took off almost instantly. At age 19,
she made her debut at Opera Boston, and at age 22 she won the national
Metropolitan Opera Competition. Suddenly, she found herself rubbing shoulders
with the upper class. “It was culture shock. I was always afraid of saying the
wrong thing or doing the wrong thing,” said Quintiliani, who still lives in
Lowell, Mass.

Sometimes, Quintiliani wishes she were anyone but herself.
In 2009, at age 27, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. A year later,
she was diagnosed with a second, rare autoimmune disease called Churg-Strauss
syndrome. In the past few years she has spent countless hours in hospital beds
and faced enormous physical hurdles to simply get on the stage and do what she
loves best. Music – and the unwavering love of her husband, Steward Schroeder –
have kept her going.

In her usual candid way, Quintiliani told her story of
fighting these two life-threatening diseases last year in an Emmy-award-winning
mini documentary by Boston Globe writers Darren Durlach and Geoff
Edgers. “I could have gone about my career and never said a word,” she said.
“But I felt like I had to do it. I felt like I was hiding by not talking about
it.”

And when you have the kind of voice that brings a thousand
people to their feet, hiding is not something you do well. “To be a great
artist, you have to live life and face it head on,” Quintiliani said. “For me
it’s about the joy that music brings. If I can’t sing, I’m extremely unhappy.
Singing is like breathing for me.”